Lamy of Santa Fe (7 page)

Walls and a roof had been put up by the settlers, but the church was far from finished. He led them in continuing the work, and considering his difficulties, it progressed rapidly. About a year after his arrival, he wrote from Danville to Bishop Purcell, by the uncertain mails:

I am in the hope that you received the letter I wrote to you two months ago. I told you that I was most [?] uncertain whether we should go on or not, for our new church at Danville, because it's so hard times this year; but we are going to finish it. we have many hands, and I hope it will be quite done perhaps before the last week of next month. You recollect that you promised me hundred dollars to help this congregation; and as I cannot have the least doubt about your word I have already engaged myself to pay the plaster, this will cost from 60 to 70 dollars; I am going also to get the altar made, be so good as to make me an answere, and let me know how you will do about that help for our church, when I came here for the first time, the building was under the roof, and since, we have expended more than three hundred dollars, you know, it is a frame building fifty feet by thirty-eight.

Furthermore, it had a choir gallery, and the altar was to be “handsome,” and there was to be an altar railing. The plastering was “remarkably well done by two good Irish Catholics,” The front centered on a sturdy, square tower, with a latticed belfry, topped by a cross, all in vastly simplified Gothic. Not much wider than the tower, with windows in pointed arches, the rest of the church reached back under a peaked roof. There was nothing like it thereabouts, and by 15 November—two weeks before Lamy had planned—it was, though not fully completed within, ready to be dedicated.

The bishop came from Cincinnati to perform the ceremony. He saw that the church stood on “a beautiful eminence visible for a great distance,” and that it was established on a two-acre plot. It was touching that many Protestant neighbors had helped in one way or another toward the building of the church. Almost more than a monument to religion, St Luke's was a mark of organized society such as had never before existed in Sapp's Settlement. Bishop Purcell gave first communions,
confirmations, baptisms, and preached on the Holy Eucharist, and celebrated a solemn Mass, and in the congregation pride was mingled with righteous fatigue after great effort. Lamy was at the center of it all. By now he was revered and loved by those whom he had led in the building of the temple and all it stood for in the way of civilization.

Two days after the dedication, Purcell moved on to Mt Vernon, where, at the request of Protestants and Catholics alike, he preached and held services. There was not yet a church there—to build this would be Lamy's next task. Meantime, he set about making a rectory for himself on donated land opposite the Danville church.

The whole pattern of his work there established the terms of his labors over the next years. He had looked no farther than Ohio—except for one occasion which seemed to threaten the continuation of work so faithfully begun.

It had to do with an impulsive notion which Machebeuf, in his parish of Tiffin in northern Ohio, seemed ready to carry out. He had been visited by the celebrated Jesuit missioner P. J. De Smet, who was already celebrated as “the Apostle to the Indians” (their name for a Jesuit was “Blackrobe”) and who brought, from his expeditions into the Far West, much of the earliest knowledge of the upper plains and Rocky Mountain regions to the established public east of the Mississippi. Machebeuf, he urged in Tiffin, should join him in his vast western missionary travels, with all its dazzling hardships and holy dangers. But what would become of Tiffin, where a little parish church of native stone was being erected? Bishop Purcell heard of the plan to go West, and knowing of the close friendship of Lamy and Machebeuf, sent Lamy to Tiffin to dissuade Machebeuf “from a project which afflicted the heart of the bishop and father.”

After hearing Lamy set forth the views of his bishop against abandoning Tiffin and going West, Machebeuf “contented himself with asking his friend,”

“
‘Eh bien! mon cher
, what would you do in my place?' ”

Lamy—whether placing an even graver responsibility on Machebeuf or simply expressing his innermost feeling—replied,

“What would I do? All right. If you go, I will follow you.”

It was a deterrent which Machebeuf was unable to ignore. Yet the episode held a prophetic note for them both, even as they remained with their own present duties—building churches, visiting their dependent missions. Purcell knew upon whom he could depend, and how to use friendship as an instrument.

iv
.

Those Waiting

I
N
1840 L
AMY SET ABOUT
the building of a small brick church in Mt Vernon. Its substance began with his creation of a sense of community among the people there. Someone gave land, another was to take the lead in bringing timber, others worked to use the roads and canals of Ohio to gather other materials. As resident pastor of Danville, Lamy could not give all his time to Mt Vernon—or even to Danville itself—for he was charged with mission duties also in Mansfield, Ashland, Loudonville, Wooster, Canal Dover, Newark, and Massillon, in addition to even less coherent communities by the waysides.

In the hot, white, diffused mists of summer, and the cracking and often howling winters alike, he and Machebeuf both had to forward their home parishes and attend to their missions. As Lamy wrote to Purcell, “I have bought a horse, and I am now a great ‘traveller'; for I have many places to attend, and I don't stay more than two Sundays a month in Danville.”

Machebeuf, too, had acquired a horse—
”beau et excellent”
—from a German priest at the exorbitant rate of one hundred dollars. His letters home were full of lively details about the life of the missioner—typical of what Lamy, too, was experiencing, and all the other young Auvergnats who had come away with them.

In their own parishes they wore their cassocks, but travelling they put on their oldest clothes, and when they came to towns they dressed more neatly in order not to invite scornful comments from entrenched Protestants. They used a long leather bag in which to carry vestments, Mass vessels, and other supplies, and the bag was thrown over the saddle. Where roads permitted, a four-wheeled wagon served the missioners and then they could carry a travelling trunk. In the very beginning, they had to “preach by their silence” but it was not long before they were able to get along in English, to the delight of their listeners. Sometimes it was so cold that the ink froze in its bottle as they wrote at night by firelight. The visitor often had to sleep next to his horse to keep warm. Coming to a house where he would spend the night, the missioner was given a bed, “sometimes very good, sometimes only passable.” In the morning, children would be sent in every direction to
tell other remote homesteaders that the priest had come, and, so soon that it was amazing, the people came gathering, settlers from Germany, Ireland, France, and the eastern states, and it was time for the sacraments and the Mass and the sermon. The listeners were “not savages, but Europeans who are coming in crowds to clear off the forests of America.” And then on again to the next cluster of those waiting for what the visitor alone could bring them. It was a matter of literally keeping the faith, at whatever cost to the traveller—on one occasion Machebeuf used the frozen Toussaint River as his highway, until the ice broke and he went through into water five feet deep.

Danville and Tiffin were eighty to ninety miles apart and there were few occasions when Lamy and Machebeuf could see each other. Sometimes they would converge at Cincinnati on visits to the bishop. Now and then they were prevented by illness from visiting each other—Lamy was ill several times, once “dangerously for several days,” but when he was well enough he joined Machebeuf for a visit to the Irish canal workers on the Maumee River, and exclaimed over American enterprise which was constructing a canal forty feet wide. One day Lamy heard that Machebeuf was dead of cholera, and “heartbroken” went to bury his oldest friend. When he arrived, he found instead that Machebeuf was simply recovering from a fever. There was joy all around, and another of the French missioners referred to the invalid who had deceived death as “Monsieur Trompe-la-Mort.”

Loving all which they were overcoming in the name of what they believed, they were content. Machebeuf wrote to Riom, “I declare to you that for all the gold in the world I would not return to live in Europe,” and Lamy in one of his letters written from abroad some years later, said he was preparing himself “to return to my Beloved Ohio.” Still, the call of their early home was strong in their early days in the Middle West. They had fine plans for a visit to Auvergne. They knew how they would go—the Lake Erie steamboat from Sandusky to Buffalo, the great canal to the Hudson River and down to New York, and from there, no such antiquated an affair as a ship under canvas but a steamer, which would reach Liverpool in fourteen days. “From Liverpool to Paris by railroad and the Straits of Dover, two days would be enough,” wrote Machebeuf to his father. “Then from Paris to Riom is but a hop-step-and-a-jump for an American. This is the way Father Lamy and I have fixed up our plan.” Yet there was a condition which had to be met first. “But it cannot be carried out until we have each built two churches, [Lamy] at Mt Vernon and Newark, I, at my two Sanduskys [then known as Upper and Lower Sandusky]. So, if you can find some generous Catholic who can send us at least eighty thousand francs for each church, we can leave within a year.
Merci
.…”

v
.

Self-Searchings

A
ND THERE IT WAS
—the material struggle from which neither would ever be free. Lamy knew moments of self-doubt—there was “grade deal to be done”; he wrote the bishop in 1841; “if I had only that sacerdotal zeal.” He need not have worried—the bishop referred to him as a “fervent pastor.”

Yet the obstacles were not merely local. The nation was undergoing a great financial depression, and despite all the good will, strong arms, and community work in the remote countrysides, materials still cost money, labor must be paid; the pressing needs of a growing population always increased the goal to be achieved. Machebeuf wrote to his brother, his sister, and his father in turn, describing the national condition. “Since the declaration of independence,” he declared, “no one ever saw here such stagnation in business affairs. Not only is this true of Ohio, but in all the States of the Union.” There was not a tenth of the money in circulation in 1842 which had been known in earlier years. Most of the banks failed; those which survived would not lend money; paper money, much mistrusted as issued by banks which later failed, destroyed confidence; employers defaulted on wages to workmen. Through the months, work was discontinued on all large enterprises. It hardly paid to raise grain crops. Food prices were depressed, but those who raised their own could not starve. Immigrants kept pouring in, not to take jobs, but to claim land and cultivate their own produce. It was obvious that support of existing churches and the construction of new ones was almost impossible. Machebeuf—and the same must have been true for Lamy—had the greatest trouble keeping up his own dwelling, and said, “I have had to sell my dear little buggy which was so useful.”

Yet, all sharing, the pastor's work went on, however humbly. Lamy's rectory at Danville was “pretty well finished” in April 1841. He later said to someone else that he found it harder to furnish a house than to put it up out of rude materials.

Even before St Luke's at Danville was completed, Lamy was continuing work on his new church at Mt Vernon. He called it St Vincent
de Paul's, after his “favorite saint,” While it was going up, he said Mass in various private houses. Overseeing the erection of the church, Lamy had a helper in “old Squire Colopy,” who was “in such good earnest, that he has scarcely any rest, till he sees it enclosed. It will be a very handsome building, at the moment I write to you,” Lamy told Purcell, “they have employed 60000 bricks. We think that it will be an ornament to the town.”

But people were not always as strong as bricks. Squire Colopy fell ill, and a Mr Brophy had to take time from his own work to oversee the construction. Lamy to Purcell in December 1841:

this church in Mt Vernon would have been enclosed two months ago if it was not for the accident that happened to Mr Brophy (the little Irish tailor) he had one day a fall, and has been lame since, though he is getting better, he was the man to attend to the building, but after he had that fall, the church was little neglected; Mr Colopy has not been very well, there was only Mr Morton who has done all he could; the mecanics that had to put on the roof have also been sick, but now all that is wanting, is to have the shingles on. all the timbers for the roof are fixed on the wals that church looks very handsome.

The church was finally roofed and plastered when fire, “by some unknown means,” on the evening of 2 March 1844, burned away all but the brick shell of St Vincent de Paul's, and that was weakened.

Purcell came to see the wreckage, preached in the court house to a large crowd, and the citizens subscribed six hundred dollars to rebuild the church. The rebuilding would be slow—”not so much for want of means as of materials, in the getting out whereof some unavoidable delays have occurred.”

But Lamy was already at work on plans for his new church at Newark, twenty-four miles from Mt Vernon, thirty-six miles from Danville. He was in constant touch with Purcell, projecting hopes, reporting progress, asking permission for various moves. In December 1841, there was as yet no deed to the Newark property where he meant to build. He wanted this settled before spring, so that he could count on beginning the work when the weather broke fine. He would be able to buy windows and altar from the church at Zanesville, and he intended to get them “very cheap.” If he had to go into debt to build, might he have permission to sell a portion of the deeded land?—for the deed, in February 1842, was now secure—though it would be the last measure to take, if necessary. The church went up, and the next question was where the priest might stay—Lamy came every fourth Sunday to Newark, had been staying with a certain family. But there was now illness in their small house and he felt it imposing on them
to return each time. How would it be if he carefully chose another good family, asked them to build a house on church property, keep a room for him, and after the equivalent of his room and board had paid for their share of the house, let it all revert to the parish of St Francis de Sales, as he had named it? There was “good spirit,” in his people. His plans went forward, even to the great matter of fine music. Newark was largely a German parish. The congregation had music in them, and he was able to report: “We have then a very good choir of German Catholics with some fair instruments. [There was no organ.] They sing very well, but almost all in German, except the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo in Latin, till they get some books of church music.” Like the early Franciscans in a place he had not yet heard of, he seemed able to do everything, even to rehearsing the choir, for it had “greatly improved” under his instruction. Would the bishop please send books of liturgical music? A cheque for two hundred dollars would also be welcome at Mt Vernon, whose people were rebuilding St Vincent de Paul's after the fire. He was happy to report that at Newark, “we have got a little help from the Widow McCarthy.”